Curbside Style

Wednesday, October 19, 2011

Hard rubbish; the great Australian annual tradition of chucking your old stuff onto the streets, ready for ...

1. your local council to take away and dump in landfill or2. your neighbours to scavenge through, and take as they wish.

Now, I have a bit of problem with the ol' tightarse festival. Not with having a clear out, and broken junk being disposed of appropriately, but what I do have a problem with, is curbside stylists (nice term, yes?) being charged for potential theft if seen taking someone else's rubbish away for their own use.

Earlier in the year, a media frenzy started with this chap being charged for hard rubbish removal, although all charges were dropped. However, we received a pamphlet from our local council this year which said the removal of hard rubbish, was not allowed. It appears other local council's have the same prohibits

"For the past 10 years Greater Dandenong Council has had a local law that prohibits the removal of rubbish put out for hard waste collection. There have been two prosecutions during that period."Dandenong Leader

Apparently, as soon as someone's unwanted stuff hits the nature strip, it becomes council property, which means the next place it will go, is into landfill.

We've seen good stuff out on the streets; furniture in need of a little TLC, clothes, children's toys, suitcases and the like. Surely someone else's unwanted is better being used by another household than unnecessarily dumped in our overflowing landfill sites?

One persons hard rubbish, is another persons treasure.

Have I been partial to a curbside stalking session this year? No exactly, but, during an evening stroll last night, Mr RF pointed to a cardboard box on the grass verge by a footpath near our house, and in amongst the damaged vinyl (Bing Crosby no less), broken crockery, and vacuum cleaner parts, sat three precious little uncut vintage sewing patterns. My thrifty friends let me tell you, I gave a little cheer.. nothing like a bit of curbside fashion to end the day.

Are you partial to a curbside stalk? Have you salvaged anything from the side of the street?

9 comments:

That is so silly - the council should be encouraging people to salvage what they can from stuff others are throwing. But I guess they might be affraid that people will also walk away with stuff that is not for throwing. When we moved from the UK we put stuff out by the bins that we were taking to the tip anyway hoping that someone would take it - saving us a trip. Some was taken - success!

That's messed up! I am very pro curbside lurking. I see it as beneficial to all. The Government doesn't have to pay for the waste disposal (or use of landfill space), the owner who didn't want it anymore doesn't have to deal with it and I get something awesome: for free!

Yeah this seems like nonsense... I live in America and we have 'Junk day' every 4 months in our neighborhood so you can set out your big trash for the city to haul away. I have pulled 60% of my furniture out of other people's trash...

I totally love those days when people put things out on the curb. But there are always really awesome things in good condition that just end up the landfill. I think it's completely unreasonable to make it illegal.

That's just crazy - far better for someone to make use of it than to go in landfill. I suppose you could always ask the owner if you could have it, but seems pointless as their obviously throwing it away.

@Rachel - Local councils do have to pay for waste disposal. Charges for sending waste to landfill have gone up significantly in the past few years, partly because they are filling up and also to encourage councils to encourage residents to recycle more.